Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc.
One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.
It's good to look at the costs vs. benefits of everything, but satellite networks are way far down on my list of concern (and I do some astrophotography).
A strong and trustworthy global democracy to enforce it, and to provide for the general welfare of everyone currently trapped in car-based cities... Is left as a simple exercise to the reader
There is a reason these taxes are popular among rich countries and opposed by emerging ones.
Has it?
Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.
Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.
These are not risks to be ignored. But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which is the first step to weighing mitigation options. (Which could be physical, e.g. lowering satellite reflectivity. Or geographic, putting more observatories are higher latitudes. Or even statistical, by launching space-based calibration telescopes, or building more array-based observatories.)
This 2023 paper is also issuing a warning, that if this continues without mitigation, ground based astronomy will be affected. They have the calculations to prove that. What they are particularly concerned about is detecting faint objects inside the radio wave spectrum will be impossible because it will be lost in noise.
Now 2 years have passed since this paper was published, and we still don’t have mitigations for ground based radio astronomy. I seriously doubt we will ever have one. And that the predictions of worse astronomy will become true, externalized into a type of internet you could have gotten with traditional cable, fiber optics, or a 5G radio tower.
EDIT:
> But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which is the first step to weighing mitigation options.
The paper I cited does that. In the abstract they say:
> We present calculations of the potentially large rise in global sky brightness from space objects in low Earth orbit, including qualitative and quantitative assessments of how professional astronomy may be affected.
and inside the paper they devote a whole chapter (chapter 5) to possible mitigations which is titled:
> Mitigations: potential gains and risks
They have calculations that show this is how our models play out.
> What they are particularly concerned about is detecting faint objects inside the radio wave spectrum will be impossible because it will be lost in noise
Could become. They're not talking about mitigation because we haven't observed the problem yet.
> Now 2 years have passed since this paper was published, and we still don’t have mitigations for ground based radio astronomy
Again, where is the "scientific advancement" that "has suffered"?
> seriously doubt we will ever have one
Based on what?!
Vera C. Rubin Observatory – Impact of Satellite Constellations
https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increa...
The Vera Rubin Observatory came online only this June, but they were complaining about Starlink already last year, and provided preliminary observation how they affected their observations, and how they plan on mitigating it.
Both the 2023 paper and the Vera Rubin Observatory statement call for a set of policies to mitigate the effect of these satellites. However policymakers have not enacted any of these other then some NSF science grants to study potential solution (I don‘t know whether or not they were defunded by DOGE; although if they were, that would seem like a criminal conflict of interest). And I have my reservations about the willingness of governments in the world to come together and set the universal regulatory framework required to enforce these proposed mitigations.
Note that increased exposure time required because of these satellites will affect the number of available operations, which in turn will decrease the amount of astronomy done with this telescope. I want to note especially the conclusion:
> Overall, large numbers of bright satellites — and the necessary steps to avoid, identify, and otherwise mitigate them — will impact the ability of LSST to discover the unexpected.
When you are disputing this you are disputing top engineers and scientists in astronomy. You better have a good reason for that (other then protecting the wealth of billionaires).
No, you didn’t. I asked for evidence this had happened. I read the ‘23 paper two years ago. It’s neat. But it’s a model. We don’t have great model parameters for high-atmosphere nanoparticles. We also have great surveillance of the ozone layer, and aren’t seeing damage.
> other then some NSF science grants to study potential solution
Yeah, I agree with this. (It may have been DOGE’d.)
We need to know what we’re up against. We need to know if it’s a problem that call for a pause, or a mandate that aluminum structures to transitioned to steel and carbon, or if the problem goes away as satellites get bigger and burn up less.
> When you are disputing this you are disputing top engineers and scientists in astronomy
I really am not. I’m taking them at their word that this is a potential problem. Again, if you have evidence this is currently a problem, the language I originally objected to, I’d love to see it.
"Workin' in these coal mines ain't hurt me none no-how."
Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund the Starship program. The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.
I beg to disagree. I see no value at all. This must be one of those accelerationist or extropianist/utilitarian beliefs.
Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend their money on, go nuts.
I strongly disagree.
If "Starship to Mars" is a possibility, then so is "Starship to the asteroid belt". It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit" - and that's very close to orbital mining of metals that are rare and valuable on Earth.
To put this into perspective, an Earth-Mars round trip costs about 15 km/s; Earth-main Belt about 13 km/s.
You'd need to add Δv for returning the mass of the asteroid. But you get your reaction mass for "free."
(To be clear, we are hundreds of billions of dollars of capex and decades away from asteroid mining. But the work to get there is decently in line with the work we would need to establish a logistical chain to Mars and back.)
Apollo to the Moon was near useless by that metric. We wouldn't have Starship to orbit if we hadn't gone to the moon.
It's something for humanity to be excited about and root for. What happened to wanting to achieve things? Having things to look forward to, build toward and be proud of is healthy for society. Must we aspire to and dream of nothing because there's suffering on earth, is that what it is? Why can't we take it as the objective good it is that we're trying to push technological boundaries that will unlock more advancements in science? In what world does HN not want that?
A single astronaut with a shovel could do more science in a couple days than all the probes combined in the last 54 years (Which have barely scratched the surface). For all we know there are literal fossils a few meters below the surface but none of our technology had the ability to even start looking.
This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do succeed. If a human colony on Mars is established, and all of humanity is wiped out on Earth, does it really benefit "humanity" or only the 0.000000001% of "humanity" located on Mars?
And life on Mars is going to be difficult, it isn't habitable, and is in fact quite hostile to life. I seriously doubt any colony on Mars would be viable long-term. If life on Earth is wiped out, the colony on Mars will very likely wither and die soon after without continued support from Earth.
Any colony on Mars is going to be so exponentially more fragile and fraught with problems for sustaining life, that the suggestion that it's somehow going to save humanity is ridiculous.
How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us don't know about.
No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO.
> How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now?
Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires strung through it.
Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably useless?
https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+...
Google tells me exactly this:
>"Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars, with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the planet."
It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments.
Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it was.
There are better things humanity could be doing with the time and money spent blowing up "starship" after "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship" if it's just going to be launching satellites.
It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-delivering.
Could this reflect your media diet?
> never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites
That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis.
> pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments
V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons.
> why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why
Starship isn't an interstellar platform...
It could reflect SpaceX's bad PR. I read plenty of news sources, and the most that makes it out there is how the latest Starship blew up, yet again. Not great PR. And beyond that, the scope of the thing is to go to Mars. It's up to SpaceX to get the PR out there, not for me to seek out niche news sources. But thanks for trying to make this about me failing instead of SpaceX failing at PR.
>That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis.
Not wild at all. And let's be real, I seriously doubt you read "newspapers".
I did a Google search for "SpaceX Starship" and nowhere in 8 pages of results did I see anything mentioning Starlink. In fact, one of the results was for the SpaceX Careers page, which says:
>"Work on the Starship program developing the vehicles that will enable large groups of people to travel to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Life at SpaceX. At ..."
So even SpaceX is selling it as going to Mars, and not about launching Starlink satelites.
But this entire conversion is completely pointless, so I won't be responding to this thread anymore with anything but a canned lame response. You've been warned.
He's actually right.
When SpaceX talks about making money from Starship. It's Starlink
Do you agree science is good for humanity? Do you like James Webb? The other things mentioned above? I'd guess yes to all based on your username. How is getting more mass into space of questionable benefit? If starship works, which everyone on earth should be hopeful and excited about, we get more mass for cheaper into space. It's the equivalent of new funding(falcon has brought down launch costs sooo much) while also unlocking previously inconceivable experiments/instruments. Who doesn't like more science funding? Who doesn't like new experiments and instruments?
If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly.
...Starlink and SpaceX are funded through investments and taxes. When they launch a non-profit's satellite I guess, indirectly, through donations, too.
Also, what? Why is the funding source a measure of value?
It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.
This is HN, so I should probably look for the data my self...
EDIT:
In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 billion. Starlink grew by only a 1/100 of that in absolute terms, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period, majority of users in the USA already had access to the internet via traditional infrastructure.
I tried to find how many StarLink users got internet access (or even high speed internet access) that didn’t have one before, but I couldn’t find the numbers. Somebody could correct me, but I very much doubt that number is high enough to consider StarLink to make even a blimp in providing internet to new users.
EDIT EDIT: I was off by a factor of 100 in initial EDIT, see child post.
Is this some AI answer or did you foobar this math by a factor of 100?
StarLink got 2 million new subscribers in 2024. Meanwhile the internet got 200 million new users. So even if every new StarLink subscriber would be a new internet user (which is obviously not true) they would still only account for 1% of new internet users. The real number is off course much much much lower.
> It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.
Now it is up to you to show that this has outsized influence on impoverished communities.
According to ITU[1] the number one factor for lack of internet access is economical. The price of internet access can be reduced with traditional infrastructure, but governments are often unable or unwilling to invest in the infrastructure needed to bring faster and cheaper internet connectivity to underserved areas. StarLink should in theory fit perfectly here, but in reality very few people from underserved communities, especially in impoverished areas, can afford StarLink, and keep being underserved. What makes this even worse is that in the rich countries (like the USA and Australia) underserved communities that had been promised infrastructure to bring the broadband internet are facing delays and cancellations because politicians believe the community can get StarLink instead (when in fact they cannot afford it). This is known as the Uber effect (from when politicians used Uber as an excuse to cancel public transit projects).
1: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/10/ff24...
Similar story for deploying broadband, especially last mile. The government hasn't been very good at that from everything I've seen (1, including starlink's failure).
As for starlinks deployments, I can't find good numbers, so perhaps I was overconfident. I wish I could find more examples, it seems like they could be doing much more than they are, but they are a for-profit company. Given that it can serve rural, poor, otherwise disconnected communities, would you be for or against using starlink to serve them through some government-backed/subsidized efforts?(2)
(1) ---The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) RDOF is one of the most recent and troubled examples. It was a $20.4 billion initiative to bring high-speed broadband to millions of unserved homes and businesses.
Massive Defaults and Questionable Winners: In the first phase, the FCC awarded $9.2 billion to over 300 companies. However, major problems quickly emerged.
LTD Broadband: The single largest winner, provisionally awarded $1.3 billion, was ultimately denied the funds by the FCC in 2022. The FCC determined that the company, a small fixed-wireless provider, failed to demonstrate it had the technical and financial capability to deliver the promised fiber-to-the-home service to nearly 600,000 locations.
Starlink (SpaceX): The fourth-largest winner, provisionally awarded $886 million, also had its award rejected by the FCC. The agency cited that the satellite technology was "still developing" and questioned its ability to meet the program's long-term speed and latency requirements.
Widespread Defaults: By 2023, bidders had defaulted on their commitments for over 23% of the locations they had won in the auction, leaving millions of Americans in limbo and forcing the FCC to try and reclaim those areas for future funding.
---The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) - 2009 This program, part of the 2009 Recovery Act, was a grant-based system rather than a reverse auction, but it provides a clear example of budget and delivery failures.
"The Road to Nowhere": One of the most infamous examples was in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Telephone Authority was awarded a $36.7 million grant to build a fiber network. Years later, a report from the Department of Commerce's Inspector General found that after spending $28 million, the project had connected only 70 customers, was nowhere near completion, and was plagued by mismanagement.
(2) https://techafricanews.com/2025/06/18/starlink-proposes-us27...
https://southernafricantimes.com/rwanda-and-spacex-sign-agre...
"200 Terminals for Amazon Communities: In Brazil, Starlink has provided at least 200 terminals to schools and healthcare centers in remote Amazonian communities, providing a vital link for education and telehealth."
(3) Of course, I predict one possible retort that it's these very same "oligarchs" that are tearing down the government and rendering it unable to build public infrastructure, thus lining Musk's and friends' pockets. To that I'd say, look at very blue california's high speed rail. Yes, trump did just take away some their funding, but it's been like 20 years now? And they're about 300% over budget, and their timeline doesn't even including full completion, but we can safely say 15+ years behind schedule. I'm not blaming democrats, I'm saying there's a systemic problem with state capacity. It is, very sadly, just not reasonable to expect much from the government when it comes to building public infrastructure.
In telecommunication the last mile is when a high capacity wire extends to a nearby (sub)urban center, but not to your house because you live 10 miles away from there (I know about the issue in the USA of having a wire across the street and have to pay ridiculous sums to connect it to your house; but that is a different issue). If you solve it by bypassing the wire altogether and opt for satellite instead, that is not really the last mile is it. A last mile would be to put up a 4G tower (or a few 5G towers).
An analogy in the transit space would be that because of the last mile issue, you opt instead to drive the whole way.
eg Quebec, Nunavut, Wales, New Zealand, Zimbabwe.
Both actual users and Governments paying for it value it in ways you don't
Running cables across out land is less impactful than lofting satellites?
Quarter of a million pounds kerosene per Falcon 9. Zero for Starship, which burns methane. (And thus emits pure methane, CO2 and water vapor.)
> the eventual need to clean up LOE to avoid Kessler Syndrome
Not a thing. (Search this comment thread for the term. There are good answers on the current state of research.)
...but sure, for the sake of argument, maybe it's only a quarter million lbs of kerosene 50 times a year, upper atmospheric pollution, and LEO crowding that gets solved by HN comments. ...instead of a dumb cable that doesn't come with a side of funding a billionaire neo-nazi. My bad.
To the left with your nonsense.
The big very visible clue is SpaceX launched over 100 times in 2024 and 2025.
Why estimate when you can count?
You can tell because SpaceX delivers those requirements in 2025 ahead of the 2026 deadline.
This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused delays or cancellation of public transit projects because politicians were able to say the people were better served with Uber than public transit.
Economic opportunity is largely shifting towards not only having internet access, but performant internet access.
Costs will come down. There will be alternatives.
But they might have taken much longer to come to market without something like this.
I'm not a fanboy, but there's obviously a lot of people who have worked hard to make Starlink a reality.
StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban planning this is known as the Uber effect.
Broadband internet via cables, fiber optics, and radio towers is state of the art in telecommunication infrastructure. Satellite is both slower, more limited, and more prone to various disruptions. The capabilities of the wires and the radio towers is also improving. 5 years ago we didn’t have 5G towers, and 20 years ago fiber optics seemed a distant dream. The only thing freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will never materialize.
If I understand your analogy correctly (which I‘m not sure I do) this is like looking at the new technology of pneumatic tubes and stipulating that all postal delivery will be done using this new technology in the future, and we may as well stop funding the national postal service, remove mail-rooms from our ships and trains, because somebody will build a pneumatic tube that will deliver mail door to door between New York and Chicago.
Do you truly believe this statement, literally?
If SpaceX sells Starlink to Amazon and buys Corning, Ciena and Nokia, they'll be extolling the virtues of LEO Megaconstellations
When I say LEO satellite internet won‘t materialize, I mean that it won‘t serve everybody. It will always be an expensive option which in best case will be subsidized for only a portion of the people that actually need it. LEO satellite is not the future of telecommunication infrastructure, it is lacking in almost every way next to traditional infrastructure. The only thing it is better at is a) marketing and b) providing internet to rich people in their yachts or in their mansions 10 miles out of the suburb.
Depending on the area of the world, wireless and other options that exist that are likely sub par. It is on every continent including North America.
Some regions of the world have aggressively invested in fibre in rural areas.
We can see in parts of the world where there is a lot of investment (and interactions with govt for permits, etc) in physical infrastructure, whether its coax for cable tv and internet, copper for phone lines (and ADSL), wireless doesn't always have a nice way in.
There are places in the world that didn't get as much wired infrastructure put in and were able to jump up to much better wireless.
Satellite based internet as a category provides an additional coverage where "traditional" infrastructure hasn't made it yet. This can be wires or other wireless.